Something New

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, WA – The last time I moved to an island I got a good piece of advice from a friend of mine. The island in question was Sicily and the advice went something like this:

“Throw away your daily to-do lists. If you get one thing done around here – find something you need at a store, pay a bill, get anywhere, do anything – consider it a successful day.”

I would learn that calling Sicily a little chaotic is like saying New York City is a little big, or the ocean a little wet, or Mini Me a little little. So anyway, as it turned out, it was good advice. Call it a twist on carpe diem – seize the day, but don’t kill yourself trying because you’re probably not going to get too much done anyway. After all, anything really worth doing can probably wait until tomorrow regardless. Or so it seemed to many.

And so, as we reenter Island Living, I am reminded of my friend’s words. But in an entirely different context. I have already learned that to say there is a lot to do here is like saying there is a lot of fish in the sea (many of which are caught everyday and served fresh at local restaurants or sold at local markets) or that there are a lot of beers and wines in a bar (many of which are made locally and are really tasty and if you don’t watch yourself you could get really fat trying them all out) or that there are a lot of trees in a forest (and hiking trails and breath-taking vistas overlooking sailboat-dotted bays and kayak-running rivers and, oh look, I bet that restaurant has fresh fish and some good micro brews…)

So, yeah, there’s a lot to do here. Which is good because we’ve promised ourselves something. And so we come to the point of all this.

We’ve promised ourselves – and the kids -- that we will try to do something new at least once a week. The truth is we probably could do something new every day. But that would be ambitious, plus there’s that whole real life thing of having to go to school and earn a living and stuff.

So, we exchange carpe diem for seize the week. We’re going to try and make Saturdays our adventure day, the day generally reserved for going out and exploring this New World we find ourselves in.

Today was our first one. It was simple, but rich. Marley started before the rest of us. She is training for a 60-mile hike (over three days) to raise money to fight breast cancer (more about that in future posts, I’m sure), so she was out of the house early hiking the seven miles from our house on the north end of the island down into the village of Winslow which serves as the “downtown” of Bainbridge Island. The kids and I joined her for breakfast at the local diner, a Bainbridge icon dubbed the Streamliner.

From there, and here’s where the new part comes in, we went to the Farmers’ Market, which is an every-Saturday-thing here through the warm months. More than just locally-grown produce, the market is artisan-and-yummy stuff free-for-all. Not that any of it is actually free, of course. I spent a good 20 minutes talking to Mike and his wife Beth and their son Ellis. They own one of the two wineries on the island that both grow their own grapes and press them here. Mike was a self-described “computer-geek programmer” until a few years ago when he decided to follow his life’s dream and buy a patch of earth here and become winemaker.

I’ve always wanted to know more about winemaking and within our short conversation had volunteered to come help out at their farm.

Meanwhile, Marley and the kids were busy buying some marigolds for planting. As we joined back up, we picked out some strawberry and tomato plants as well. Once we arrived back home, we found some old planting pots that had been thoughtfully left behind by the previous tenants and all got our hands good and dirty settling everything into their new homes.

We debated the best places to put them and decided that we were very smart to put the plants in pots because the sun is limited in our little patch in the forest and we’re not quite sure yet where they’ll be able to soak the most light. Until you know where you’re going to put down roots, it’s good to keep things mobile.

It was also good to have my hands in soil again. It made me miss our garden in Ohio, but also seeded that wonderful hopeful feeling that only comes from planting living things in good earth. I cannot guarantee that we will enjoy delicious strawberries or tomatoes from our new little mini garden, or that the flowers will bloom any longer than today, but I know that I can fertilize them every few weeks and make sure they get enough water, or not too much water, and fight off the weeds as best I can and if I do all those things chances are pretty good.

Of course I know they could all be dead in a week, too. But, still, it is a good kind of hope that comes from getting dirt deep under my fingernails. It capped off a week that saw a return of hope for us. The joy of hope. The joy trust. Indeed, it was good week.

While the dust is far from settled, we are settling. The ache of departure is slowly being replaced with the first tentative beats of whatever new rhythm is unfolding for us here.

So there you have it. There – to the Bainbridge Island Farmers’ Market – and back again. Next time, I’ll try and take some pictures.

One Week

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND – Has it only been a week? It seems like we’ve been here much longer.

I’m sitting alone in our living room. Drinking a glass a wine. We have a fireplace, but I can’t see it because of the boxes. I’m not crying, but the truth is a feel pretty damned depressed.

I don’t really feel much like writing, but Marley said it might be therapeutic.

Overall, we’re doing pretty well I suppose. We arrived late on Friday night, worn out but none the worse for wear. Marley and I had our first fight of the trip trying to find the ferry docks after being welcomed into Seattle with hellish rush-hours traffic. It was a long day of driving, with emotional – and physical – highs and lows as we made our way over the Snohomish Pass and down into the Puget Sound.

Finally though the traffic, we were coming to what we figured was the last 40 minutes of our trip and the most, well, epic-like – loading our car aboard the Seattle-to-Bainbridge Ferry where we would stand on the bow of the great ship and pose with windswept hair as Indiana Jones…um, make that Ohio Andersons…soundtrack music played in the background.

Instead, things were falling apart. The fight was stupid. I was just being oversensitive and bitchy. And tired. But you could hardly call it a fight. We’re much better at fighting these days. It was over as soon as it started really, but it was a crappy way to enter into the folds of our new home. We regrouped quickly, though, and made our peace. Which was good because the next three hours would have really sucked otherwise.

The ferry we had hoped to get on had left just a few minutes before we arrived, which meant we’d have to wait another hour before we could make the final leg of our journey. Except, as it turned out, we would wait that hour only to drive through the ferry-boarding queue and get stopped one car shy of making the next ferry. That is to say, the second car in front of us was the last one to make it on, making us second in line now for the next ferry. One last try as saying this simply: we were going to have wait yet another hour.

Which was fine. The kids took it stride. Noah and I went and looked at the fireboat docked nearby. A massive containership plowed by on its way out of the seaport off to ports unknown, riding high with thousands of steel boxes stacked like so many blocks of multicolored Legos. Except in the process the warm wonderful sunny day gave way to heavy clouds and wind and cold. By the time we got on board the ferry it was down right blustery.

We made our way topside, from the belly of the boat, where the cars and trucks are corralled in long lines, up onto the passenger decks where commuters sit and mingle or huddle over laptops or read or doze listening to Ipods. Outside a few people were braving the cold winds feeding a flock of seagulls that were sailing along side us, swooping and diving in for the tossed morsels.

We were soon among them. And in the process we managed to get this picture taken – a record of the end of our long trip and the beginning of our new adventure here in Seattle.

By the time we made it to our house the light was dwindling, but the kids were still wildly enthusiastic to explore their new home. I had hoped for an early afternoon arrival where we would have plenty of time to get settled for our first night, but instead we unpacked the bear necessities and drove into town to find something to eat. By the time we made it back and crawled into bed it was well past 11pm. It wasn’t the kind of “home coming” I had hoped for, but it was good to finally be here.

Like that last day of traveling, the week since has had its ups and downs. We’ve been slowly getting unpacked and settled. Chris and Shannon came to visit on Saturday, bringing food and flowers and beer. We couldn’t have hoped for a better welcome wagon.

But aside from the one of the boys who live down the road, we’ve yet to meet any of our neighbors. Indeed, it has felt remarkably lonely. Our “tree house” as we call it, nestled in among the 100-foot evergreens completely masking what neighbors we do have, only heightens that sense of alone-ness.

The house itself – while very “us” in that it’s funky and rustic and eclectic and bit rough around the edges – doesn’t get much sun, even when its sunny, surrounded as it is by aforementioned tall trees.

I find myself missing our house. The way the sunlight pours into our bedroom in the morning and cascades into the living room during the day. As I unpack, I find myself missing our kitchen and all the storage. I miss our dishwasher, because the one here sucks. I miss the attic and the shed and all the other places for the all the crap I don’t know what do with yet. I miss "my spot" up on the breakfast bar where so many wonderful conversations have been had.

I miss the hourly bells of the big church down the road and the seemly random songs they play at seemly random points throughout the day. I miss the general store-like market and gas station where I can be there and back again – with a bottle of half-and-half first thing in the morning or steaming hot pizza at night or whatever else in between – in less than five minutes flat. I miss the little red brick K-12 schoolhouse next door. I miss the open farm roads and the new corn and soy bean crops that are just now, I can picture clearly, transforming the brown Ohio landscape into wide seas of green.

More than anything, though, I just miss our neighbors – our friends and our family. I miss the herd of kids that were constantly running through our house and building forts out back and riding bikes out front and creating wonderful chaos everywhere. God, I miss the kids. And their parents. And our kids’ grandparents. And aunts. And…everyone.

Great, now I’m crying again.

I just didn’t think it was going to be this hard. And as I reread what I just wrote I know I sound like an unthankful schmuck, because it’s true I have so much to be thankful for here and dishwashers and attics don’t matter at all. And I love tall trees. I guess all I’m saying is that it feels like this is the part where we should be totally enthralled with all the new coolness of everything we’re doing, and to be sure there has been some of that, a lot of that really, but a lot of the time I just find myself being stuck in the sadness.

Marley wrote as much to one of our friends back in Ohio today. Even as I write these words, Diana’s response drops into our inbox, her words both understanding and a breath of hope…

I imagine the loneliness and isolation are at the unbearable stage at this point. It will take some time, but you will ease into a new routine…

…and (without getting into the details) they make me laugh, just when I needed a boost. And so it has been with this blog -- comforting and encouraging while also a certain amount of sharing of a heavy load. Thank you all for coming on this journey with us and for your many comments, calls and emails along the way. You will never know how much they’ve meant to us.

I’m not sure what happens from here, as far as the blog goes. I have found that when we are traveling there is a natural rhythm that emerges, not unlike when I was a reporter on the road, that makes writing very easy. That rhythm is harder to hold onto when “real life” settles in.

Be that as it may, I’d like to try and keep at this. As usual, Marley’s right: if nothing else, it is cathartic for me. “There and back again” has so many more possibilities as a title than what I first imagined. The truth is, I’m not sure where “there” is anymore – that is, where we’re going, exactly.

But wherever “there” ends up, I’d like to keep bringing it back here to share with you, the people who matter most to us.

Crossing the Great Divide

SOMEWHERE IN IDAHO – Last year’s trip was a lot of fun. This time around, not so much. Last year, the journey truly was every bit as enjoyable as the individual destinations. This time, it has seemed more like work.

Part of this has been the difference between traveling in an RV versus a car. You can’t help but feel connected with the places you pass in an RV. You see it better from the huge big screen TV that is the windshield, a wider and much higher viewpoint than granted by mere cars.

There is also the community of camping, such as it is in the RV universe. You meet your neighbors and conversation seems so much easier than what might come in fleeting moments in and out of hotel chambers. And of course, no lugging luggage in and out of the nightly pitstops.

To be sure, driving the RV was exhausting. But even that lent itself to the adventure. Epics should be hard.

All these things are true, but I don’t think they are the real TRUTH of why I have been enjoying this trip so much less. This trip is hard because of what and who are leaving behind.

But again, as with most things worthwhile, there should be some hardship, some pain.
This of course, is the beginning of a much larger epic for us. But I guess what this trip has felt like is that strange twilight that separates the end of night and the dawn of a new day. The sun isn’t quite up yet, but the light is gathering.

It is a limbo between yesterday and tomorrow where today doesn’t quite seem to exist, a place where home is both what is behind and what it before. Usually, Marley and I spend most of our time in travel deep in conversation. Early on in this trip, though, we acknowledged that wasn’t happening. We saw our need to grieve our sense of loss in leaving Ohio quietly, together but alone.

Only the day before, we would learn last night during dinner, more than a foot of snow had fallen on these roads. Indeed, we had entered the snowline repeatedly throughout the day. And although the skies were windy and cold with scattered clouds, the roads were clear and the sun shined brightly. It was the kind of day that feels not quite like winter, but not quite like spring, either.

But something significant began to change yesterday as we made our way though the deep valleys and high mountain passes of Montana. At some point in the afternoon, I saw a brief flash of roadside sign that said:

You are now crossing the Continental Divide
Elevation: 6963 feet

It is the place from which all water, instead of moving east back towards the Atlantic, begins a journey that will end eventually in the Pacific. It is, as I think it put it last year, the tipping point. Without even thinking about it I called Marley’s brother Chris to announce we were on the downhill slope of our journey.

And then something important happened. Marley and I began to talk. We talked about what we had learned in our three years in New Knoxville and how God had worked and moved in our lives in ways that were so unexpected. And as we made our way into Missoula, where we would bed down for the night, we began exploring what this new chapter of our lives might look like. We asked ourselves what our prayer should be for this season we will eventually call our years at Mars Hill.

Rather than build a list of demands that we might present before God, we searched for how our hearts might be changed according to his will, to be open to the unexpected and maybe even the unwanted. We found ourselves dwelling on the word “effective” – the ways that we might be more effective parents, spouses, students, and servants – but ultimately, I think, how we can most effectively love God, ourselves and those around us.

For me, I think that means learning how to be a better doer, really embracing the idea that without action, without work, my faith is dead. I want to find ways where I can meaningfully live out the idea that Christ really does have no hand but our hands.

Just before we left Ohio, I met a guy that has given me a glimpse of what that looks like. David and I share some common threads in our respective stories. We’re both about the same age, both Army veterans, both parents of the most beautiful children ever born and both married to the loves our lives.

But where I have long yearned to find a way to help others in way that was practical and meaningful, Dave just went and out did it. Indeed, my vision has always been volunteering in a place where hungry people could get fed. So was David’s. And for awhile he traveled long hours to work in missions for the homeless far from his home in Sidney, Ohio.

Then he found out there were homeless in Sidney, but no missions to help feed them. So he just started his own ministry. You can read about it here and check out his personal blog here. What I admire about David is that he just did it. He didn’t wring his hands or bitch about what wasn’t, he just saw a need and filled it. Now several churches in Sidney have partnered with him and real people in real need are finding some help and some compassion during a time in their lives when both have been in short supply.

This is a video that shows the work that he and his friends do every Saturday.


Dave’s motivation, as best I can tell, is not to win cool points with God. He’s not trying to do good deeds so that he can build a line of credit in his cosmic bank account.

He is simply, clearly, loving because he has been loved. He is working out his faith, that is to say, he is giving it a work out. In short, he’s the kind of guy I want to be more like.

He's one of the many reasons it is so hard to leave home. Meanwhile, however, we're happy to report we should be arriving home sometime this evening. It's been a hard trip, but a good one.

On the fly

SOMEWHERE ON I-90, MONTANA – So far, so good. I write this from the passenger seat while Marley drives through the Montana badlands.

We’re feeling a bit beat up, though. I’m still nursing two good-sized road-rashes I got from a spill I took on the alpine slide in Denver. My ego was bruised more than my body, but my body still hurts.

Marley slept funky last night and has a terrible kink in her neck. It’s the kind of kink that makes it painful to even turn around, so hopefully having keeping her eyes on the road rather than smacking the kids around in back will help out.

Meanwhile, Noah has stopped bleeding. His sister schwacked him with a golf club last night on the hotel’s putting green. Gashed a pretty good hole in his forehead. Thought we might have to get stitches, but we managed to get things under control on our own. (Props to the Holiday Inn in Sheridan, Wyoming for sporting the first putting green we’ve seen on this trip, or any trip for that matter, inside the hotel, and of course for putting up with a screaming, bleeding four-year-old with grace, an ice pack and bandaids.)

Amelia seems to have gotten through the worst of the swimmers ear fever, but the twice daily doses of foul-tasting antibiotics remain a challenge. Still, despite it all, everyone seems to be doing pretty well. Plus, we haven’t lost any cats yet. Or the transmission.

I’ll close this on-the-fly posting with the story on-the-elevator encounter I had this morning. I was going down to the car to begin the packing process and stepped onto the elevator with a couple and their young daughter. The wife immediately took notice of my Mars Hill Graduate School sweatshirt and said “Mars Hill Graduate School!”

Long story short, she’d heard of our little seminary in Seattle. They’re a military couple. He’s an Army physician and they’re in the middle of their own cross-country move, relocating from Fort Bragg, N.C. to…um, yeah…about 20 minutes down the road from where we’ll be living.

Their pastor from back in Bragg is helping them move. We all enjoyed a long cup of coffee together talking about faith and military mental health issues – something Marley and I think we may very well get into after Mars Hill. It was, in short, a moment.

Anyway, they gave me a book they’re excited about, their contact info and a promise we’ll all get together once the dust settles from our respective moves.

Denver coming and going

DENVER – On our way into Denver on Sunday we had a wonderful treat. There was heavy rain, there was hail, there was wind and there was Carmen.

Carmen is one of my mother's oldest friends. As old, dear friends sometimes do, they had fallen out of touch for awhile and only within the past few weeks have they rekindled their friendship. I have not seen her since I was teenager.

And yet as we parked side-by-side under the tin roof protection of an old gas station pitstop, with the weather thundering around us, Carmen embraced us as if we were her own kids.





There were stories, there were pictures, there was video. It was like a mini family reunion in the rain. Carmen was on her way out of Denver where she lives now to visit her father in Kansas and we were trying to get Denver in time for Church, so our time was brief, but it was ever so sweet.

My mom and Carmen met in nursing school in Kansas when the two were fresh out of high school. They were roommates and best friends.

I asked her to tell me a story about my mom that I probably haven’t ever heard before. Carmen didn’t miss a beat, thinking only a few brief moments, then smiling and said, “Okay, here’s one.”

One day, when they were still in nursing school, their money and food had completely run out. They were starving. This wasn’t at all uncommon for them, she said.

“Your mom was 18 or maybe 19 at the time, and she said come on, we’re going to go find some food,” said Carmen with a gleam in her eyes. So the pair hiked down to the nearest Dairy Queen.
“We have no money,” Carmen says my mom announced to the manager. “But we’ll do dishes for you if you’ll feed us.”

She was right I had never heard that story, but it didn’t surprise me. That sounds like something my mom, ever bold and ever practical, would do. Of course it didn’t work, but it was worth the try. And somehow they made it through nursing school together anyway.

Thank you Carmen for making our visit -- too short, but filled full of substance anyway -- happen as our paths crossed in the storm.

On Monday, I had lunch with a wonderful friend of a friend who goes to Peter's church. Duncan and I met when we were traveling through Denver last year. Our meeting was too short then, but we made up for that this time around with a lunch-hour that turned into well over two hours of conversation. Thank you Jeff for introducing us from a far.

Now, we’ve stayed in Denver a day longer than we intended. Amelia has swimmer’s ear that has gone from bad to worse, so we needed get her to a doctor. And a little concerned about the hesitation in the shifting of our little green van, we wanted to get our vehicle checked out as well.

Amelia got the antibiotics she needed. Unfortunately, the fix will not be so simple for the Odyssey. The dealership says we need a new transmission and they’d be happy to put in for us for about $3600. Ouch. We’ve been told by a few local mechanics, though, that we can probably limp our way into Washington.

Our friend Scott, the retired Army chaplain in Montana that we visited on our trip last year, knows what we’re going through. When he moved his family from Germany to Montana a few years ago, he stopped in Lousiana to pick up his six horses, three dogs and about half a dozen cats. And we thought we were crazy!

As we were weighing our options yesterday he offered the best encouragement…

“If you try to limp it along and you do breakdown, just think of the adventures you might have :-),” he wrote in an email.

It was just the reality check we needed. No need to get immobilized in what-ifs. Time to embrace the adventure. We’re leaving in just a bit. For those of you who are praying types we’d appreciate any good words on our behalf.

On Neighbors and Not Being Dead

DENVER – My mom captured pretty concisely the pain I know Marley and I have been feeling since our departure.

“It feels like someone has died,” she said, “it that’s kind of deep ache.” She added, after a short pause and a teary chuckle, “but you’re not really dead, so that’s good.

I couldn’t have said it better. It’s good – yes, in that nobody has died, but also in the larger sense that we are going down a path that has been prepared for us.

But it is so very painful.

I have moved more times than I can count at this point. Dozens of times. In the past six years alone, we have moved six times. I keep saying we should be better at it by now.

But this, by far, has been the very hardest move ever. But not because we’re still hopelessly disorganized, which we are, but because of who we are leaving behind. All those who’s make a what – a what that some might call community.

On the first morning of this trip I was up early writing in the small hotel lobby while Marley and the kids slept. A TV played in the corner. The big story of the day was about a 73-year-old man named Angel Torres who was hit by a car crossing a street in Hartford. The video showed him writhing in pain as cars drive around him. A scooter circles, eventually a crowd gathers but no one helps. Finally the police show up.

You can watch it here, but fair warning: it is distressing.



Anyway, one of the talking heads said this is what our country is becoming. “Everyone is turning inward,” she observed. “We are losing our sense of community.”

That may be true for much of the larger world, but one of the many good things I am taking with me from New Knoxville, is that it doesn’t have to be true everywhere. I have been thinking about that for days now.

And then we sat down in a beautiful cathedral in downtown Denver shortly after arriving on Sunday. And we inhaled the breath of fresh air that we desperately needed.

Peter Hiett has been one of our favorite teachers for several years. I have yet to listen to one of his sermons and not be moved and challenged and inspired.

And so it was not a complete surprise when the sermon began with the music of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. And then the video of Mr. Torres emerged on the big screen TV up front as the music continued in the background. It was a jarring and disconcerting juxtaposition.

And then Peter began his teaching on the Good Samaritan.

The story, recorded by Luke, goes like this:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers.

They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

So, we’ve got a “lawyer looking for loopholes,” Peter says, asking who is my neighbor? Who, exactly, must I love to be saved? It was the wrong question and Jesus doesn’t even bother to answer. He doesn’t even acknowledge it.

Instead, he tells a story.

Peter noted that two things typically defined people in these days – how they dressed and how they talked. And Jesus describes this person laying naked and unconscious on the side of the road as basically a blank slate. It would have been impossible to know which group he belonged – Jew or Gentile, Roman or slave, friend or enemy – no way to tell.

And so then we have a leader of the religious establishment, a member of the upper class who was probably mounted and could carry the man to help, opting to do nothing.

And then along comes the Levite, of the tribe of Jews specifically tasked with serving the community. He couldn’t carry the man, but he could have at least rendered first aid. But he too walks on by.

Finally, the Samaritan comes along. During these times Samaritans were among the most reviled among the Jewish community. They were considered evil heretics and Jews prayed for their demise. Anyone hearing this story in the first century would know that for a Samaritan to ride into a Jewish town with a near-dead man on his horse, well, how much it would enrage the locals. They’d probably want blood. They’d probably want to make him a scapegoat.

All we know is that he does all he physically can while he is present to help. And then, just as he’s preparing to leave, maybe even facing an angry crowd outside, the Samaritan pays a price – any price necessary to take care of the wounded man. He covers the man’s debt. But then he says he’ll return. The Samaritan says he’s coming back.

“The Samaritan didn’t wait for us to become his neighbor,” said Peter, connecting the Samaritan directly to Jesus, “instead, he became our neighbor.”

The question isn’t who is my neighbor, what are the legal parameters that I must fulfill? The real question, rather, is who can I be a neighbor to? The difference is subtle but important. The first implies obligation, a legal duty, while the second is motivated out of eager anticipation.

Either way, the answer seems to be everyone.

At one point Peter said “Life is a body, a neighborhood of love, a community of love.” And it made me cry thinking of everyone back home and our neighborhood and our community of love. In some ways, it feels like we all found each other beside the road. I know I felt like each of our friends there at one point or another came alongside me when I was hurt and bleeding and naked and cleaned me with oil and wine.

Truth be told, Marley and I arrived in New Knoxville coming out of the most challenging time of our marriage. And each of you played such an important role in our healing, and ministering to our wounds.

Thank you for not leaving us by the side of the road.

For what it’s worth, Peter ended the sermon, as prayer and benediction with these words:

Don’t you want somebody to love?Don’t you need somebody to love? Couldn’t you love somebody to love? You better find somebody to love.

If those words sound familiar, or not, then you might enjoy listening to this… A song of worship never sounded better.

The artists I love

HAYS, KANSAS -- The night before we left I sat in our living room alone in the dark sipping red wine from a plastic cup. It was late. I was staring at our fireplace, thinking about the artists I love. And I was crying.

Randy had been over working all day painting downstairs – the third day he’d spent on that project working long meticulous hours during precious time off from his job. He worked like an artist painting a perfect blank tapestry. Randy is also an artist of conversation. He can talk to anyone and fill any discussion with insight, intelligence and wisdom. And if conversation ever slips into debate or -- as it sometimes should for those who are passionate about their world – even argument, Randy never holds overheated words against you. Even if you were a jackass. Instead, he paints your house.

Over and over again through the past few weeks, Randy’s wife, Sandra has made us meals and helped out with our many projects. On this day she had brought us a plate full of breakfast tacos before heading to work. She is a culinary artist. And I must say it has been a pleasure sharing her art over these past few years. But more importantly, Sandra’s creative genius lies in her gifts as mother and wife. Together Randy and Sandra have been a living book on parenting and we have learned more from their example than perhaps any others. They have, in ways great and small, made “love your neighbors” the easiest command of all.

Meanwhile, Sam had just spent hours with me figuring out how to finish the mantle on the fireplace. He didn’t leave until after 10 pm. The night before he’d missed his son’s baseball game. Tonight he’d missed a date with his wife. And when I was ready to give up on the mantle, he just made it happen. The house isn’t even on the market yet and he’s long since proven himself to be the hardest working realtor we’d ever worked with. Indeed, he takes what many make the science of home selling and turns it into an art form. But the simple fact is he would probably not be our realtor if he was not our friend first. And he has been a good friend, with the knack of saying simple, yet deeply profound words that can resonate for days. This is his real art.

Wendy had been over for the better part of the day as well painting upstairs, despite a rough night before. She hadn’t mentioned any of it as we’d worked, but -- as we have so many times before -- she’d stopped by to share a glass of wine and the challenges of the day with us. Wendy is an artist – in oils, watercolors, simple house paint and so much more, but she is also an artist of the heart. She cares and she shares. She gives and she receives with equal enthusiasm and grace. And, despite many challenges over the past few years, she is one of the most consistently peaceful people I know. And she is a truth-teller. She is constantly speaking truths. In fact, if I had to describe Wendy in two words they would be: Peaceful Prophet – she blends quiet humility with courageous conviction.

Diana has been a near constant presence over these last few weeks and this day was no
different. She brought us wonderful chicken salad sandwiches, using the baby’s precious nap time to make a meal for us. Knowing how organizationally challenged we are, she helped us make our garage sale happen. She would even sneak over at times, delivering moving boxes to us without even telling us. She is absolutely always ready to help, but that’s not her art.

Her art is in friendship. She and her husband Marc are warm, open, funny, and make being friends the most natural thing in the world. For Marley, Diana has become the kind of close friend that is very, very hard to leave behind. Marc, who is from Seattle originally, we think would be very wise to move his family back there as soon as possible. In the meantime, I will miss the merging of our tribes, the shared affinity for good beer and the conversations running late into the night.

Earlier in the day, I had gotten a package from Ted, my best friend, second only to my wife. It was his latest work of art – a DVD that he had made, the result of many hours of work and not a few conversations. The craftsmanship and attention to detail were breathtaking. Plus, it was really good. Ted is a renaissance man, a modern day DiVinci, who is one of those rare people who really can do anything he sets his mind to.

Anyway, I had called to congratulate him and tell him how much he sucks. I spent a good few minutes explaining in detail why and how he sucks for not being here to help us get ready for the move and that, basically, it’s all his fault that we’re getting a late start. Ted is the kind of friend you can do that with and not worry for a second that he’s taking any of seriously. Even though he really does suck and it really was all his fault. Ted is an artist in many ways, but the art of his that I cherish most is his uncompromising ability to be a great friend – to really know me, many warts and all, yet somehow seemingly still like me.

I knew that Darryl and Cathy would be over the next day, to see us off before we left. They had hosted a going away party at their house a few days earlier. The generous canvass they provided created a wide mural of memories that we will cherish forever. Indeed, generosity and openness are among the crafts they have perfected.

Outside, Grandpa Jeff had spent the hottest hours of the day, the first day that really felt like summer, edging the endless flowerbeds and mowing his signature diagonal cut across our lawn, sweat spilling off his body like a heavy shower. He is a landscaping maestro, bringing together the various pieces of our yard into perfect harmony. This has been a hard year for Jeff, but despite that he has remained one of the most giving people I know. And we have hiked up and down Jackass Hill together more than a few times, struggling together through pain and heartache. Jeff’s art is a combination of serving, meekness and willingness to struggle with the pain that marks him as a great leader.

Together, my mom and Jeff share the kind of gifts in grand-parenting that create a sweet song for our kids. Jeff has taught them both to golf and built within them an enthusiasm for sports and play. My mom has taught them to pray and instilled within them simple believing for the things of God. Plus, they're the kind of grandparents that remember to slip gifts quietly into the car, toys for playing on the road and in pools along the way. Most importantly, they have both sculpted relationship and memories with Amelia and Noah that are truly irreplaceable. And I know there will be much more to come.

My mom had been over earlier wanting to say her goodbyes, but I wouldn’t let her. I just wasn’t ready. Plus, I knew there was still a lot of work to do before we left the next day. We wouldn’t leave until she’d made it back from work Thursday evening, I told her. This move has been hardest on her most of all, and yet she has created a song of remarkable grace, with lyrics that somehow mix tears with encouragement and a melody that weaves an aching melancholy with the joy of the Lord. She is so proud of us, she tells us time and again. And this is the creative gift she shares with us and the world – the art of building up with honest and insightful praise.

And so I sat there in the dark, drinking my wine, looking at the fireplace through watery eyes. I had done a pretty good job all day staving off the tears, but somehow it was the fireplace that sent me over the edge.

When we first moved to New Knoxville and knew only my Mom and Jeff – and none of these other New Knoxville artists yet -- one of the only things we wanted in a house was a fireplace. We knew we wanted a home where friends and family could gather and in our mind that required a fireplace.

The house we eventually bought, however, while perfect in just about every other way, didn’t have one. So, even before our first boxes were unpacked we began building one. I designed the framing myself and helped build and install it. And so within weeks, even as winter was just beginning to settle in, the smells and sounds and glow and warmth of cracking wood were filling our home. But the fireplace remained a work in progress. The hearth needed tiling. And then, sigh, retiling (Marley was wise to have fired the first guy and not let him try again after the bullnose cracked off.) The rise above the mantle needed finishing. And even the mantle never quite looked right.

And so, two and half years later, the fireplace remained a work in progress. But there’s nothing like trying to sell a house to get things looking right. And suddenly, there it was. In the days, and even hours before, it had all come together. It was finished. And it was good.

The thing was, I realized, the people we had built it for, the relationships we had hoped to kindle and stoke and warm, they were not finished. They remain, sadly, tear-jerkingly because of our departure, but oh-so-thankfully in all other ways, very much a work in progress.

Some who are reading this from various corners of the globe can attest to the fact that we can be not the best of long distance friends. We’re trying and maybe someday we’ll even get our act together enough to send out Christmas cards like all the normal people do. But we like to think – we pray and hope, at any rate – that we are learning how to invest enough of ourselves in those we know and love that no matter how much time and distance may separate us that we can always just pick back up right where we left off whenever our paths cross again.

Under the Overpass

COLUMBIA, MISSOURI – It was smooth sailing all through our drive on Friday. Until we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by tornadoes, that is.

It was funny because my mom’s oldest friend Carmen, who we will visit on our way through Kansas, had just given us a full Driving Through Tornado Alley Briefing just the day before. Well, maybe it wasn’t funny, but at least it was well timed.

We were about a half hour outside of St. Louis when we saw the wall of darkness rising up like mountains on the horizon before us. It was the kind of wall of darkness pilots make wide hundred-mile-long detours around if they can. A pulsing glow of lightning thumped like a thunderous heartbeat from deep within the mass of swirling black clouds. It was freaky.

Marley had just called her brother Chris to touch base and thankfully he was in front of the computer. She was just in the middle of making a joke about tornado warnings and taking immediate cover as Chris checked the local weather radars and said there was a tornado warning and that said we should take immediate cover.

There was a pause at this point.

“Are you serious?” she said

“It says one tornado has already touched down and more are possible,” he said.

Within a few minutes we found some low ground under an overpass. There was a crew of construction workers topside that hadn’t heard yet. We passed on what we knew and they scrambled to get everything battened down as the full force of the storm descended on us. They would later say on the local radio station that in the next 30 minutes it would rain 3 ½ inches and that at least three more twisters had touched in our immediate vicinity. And that another wave of storm front was moving up quickly from the south for Round Two.

It sounded like we had just enough time to make a break for it and, wishing the construction guys good luck and Godspeed, that’s exactly what we did. We listened on the radio as the next front battered the area we’d just left even as beautiful blue skies opened up in front of us.

Amelia was a total trooper through it all, scared but focused on tending to her nervous brood of cats. Noah, of course, slept through the whole thing.

We made it another few hours before settling in for the night here in Columbia. The kids had a nice long swim in the pool before bed and had another good swim just now as we prepare to hit the road.

As we sat together eating breakfast Amelia, reflecting matter-of-factly, said “I know why we didn’t get hurt by the tornadoes yesterday.”

Marley and I both looked up. “Because I prayed,” she said with a shrug, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. And of course it was.

Hard Night

NEW CASTLE, INDIANA – We made it ten miles before the cat started puking. Only 2397 miles to go. Or so we thought. Apparently we were already going in the wrong direction.

As we fueled up at the New Knoxville Market, I punched in our new address on Bainbridge Island and waited for what seemed like minutes for the GPS to calculate our route. When it was finally done the display read:

Miles to Destination: 2407
Time to Destination: 39 hours, 10 minutes

“Wow, that’s like a work week of driving,” said Marley.

No problem, I thought, pulling out on to Route 29. It was well into the evening. The sun wasn’t quite setting yet, but casting long shadows and a perfect yellow glow on the Ohio countryside. The golden hour, photographers call it.

In front of us, a thin slice of crescent moon was beginning its descent to the western horizon. It was strange but Ohio never looked so beautiful. That’s about when Twister started puking.

A few months ago we had bought a gross of paper towels from Sam’s Club, but had barely put a dent in them. In the days before we left, we had been handing them out like so many highly-absorbent quilty parting gifts, yet somehow had saved none of them for our trip. Not one.

So as Marley is trying to mop of Twister’s mess with Kleenex we notice the navigator has now added more than a hundred miles to our trip.

Miles to Destination: 2541

By the time we decided to call it a night, we’d made it here to New Castle, Indiana – about half hour outside of Indianapolis. The first leg of our great migration west ended in a scratchy roadside motel with an out of focus TV and an AC unit that rattled through the night like a rusty old train.

It was a hard night. Not because of all the hard work that day or broken TVs or noisy air conditioners or even puking cats. It was a hard night because with each passing mile the full weight of what we are leaving behind truly settled on my soul. We are leaving so much more than just a place. We are leaving friends and family that have meant more to us and have done more for us than mere words could ever express.

Yes, we are going to something. And going to something so challenging and new will be fun, scary and exciting.

But right now we are just leaving. And leaving something so rich and wonderful is sad and hard and heartbreaking.

Being in the moments

SEATTLE -- Walking through the security checkpoint at the airport was just awful. If Noah had yelled and pitched a fit it would have been easier. Instead he waved bye-bye with his lower lip trembling as he tried so hard not to cry and I can’t even write about it now without tears coming to my eyes. I have been so excited to embark on this trip, but leaving behind those three people who matter to me as much as breathing was excruciating.

So it was hard to get going, but I got on with it. And then I started to get excited again. I am not a happy flier, so I spent a good portion of my puddle jumper flight to Detroit in prayer: I really hate small commuter jets. Then my next flight was delayed an hour due to some sort of mechanical issues, so that flight became a five hour event. And while I sometimes found myself thinking, “When is this ever going to end,” for the most part I took advantage of those hours to immerse myself in the glory of God’s creation far beneath my plane and the glory of his handiwork nearer at hand.

I met a woman who is Catholic, but whose eyes have been opened to the all-encompassing body of Christ which is not restricted by the boundary lines of denominations. She has decided that she now identifies herself first as a Christian, second as a Catholic. How Christ must rejoice each time another member of His body drops her walls and chooses unity.

I met another woman who boarded the plane with two small children, a baby, and a car seat in tow. I was in awe of her grace under pressure, her patience with her children, the way she looked frazzled and exhausted by the end of the trip but never once raised her voice in frustration. And I met a third woman who, observing the mother’s plight, turned around in her seat, took the baby from her and provided any form of comfort and assistance she could throughout the entire flight. Compassion, mercy, grace, strength: God’s heart demonstrated for all to see.

I listened to teachings and finished a book I loved. And each time I was tempted to wallow in boredom I looked out my window and thanked God for billowy white clouds casting ponderous shadows on the ground, ripples of mountain ridges wandering across plains, and the peace that passes understanding as I drew closer to my destination.

Bombs and Tidal Waves

It feels weird posting this having gone no farther today than my grocery store and back.

Yeah, There and Back Again – the day-by-day adventures of one man’s perpetual search for single-serving juice boxes while fearlessly facing the ancient paradox of whether or not to purchase nearly-expired-yet-deeply-discounted organic milk all while fighting off the infinite demands of a nearly-four-year-old boy’s never-ending lust for all things sugared and the siren wail of a nearly teenage 8-year-old girl and the withering hail of her sigh-tipped “are we almost done yet?” arrows.

The thing is it has felt like an adventure. And like all good adventures, this one has been full of surprises already.

Like, for instance, grocery shopping not only wasn’t that bad, it was actually pretty enjoyable. Okay, I really did have some trouble finding the right juice boxes and, yeah, I really did wrestle with the “Manager’s Special” milk and whether or not we could drink it before it turned sour. (I opted to go for it, because, you know, I live on the edge like that.)

But the kids were just awesome. I wish I could take some credit for subtly manipulating them into the pair of remarkably helpful, well-behaved junior shoppers that they were, but I am at a loss.

Both pushing their own little carts (gotta give props to Krogers for those carts) Amelia and Noah, dare I say it, joyfully engaged through more than an hour of aisle-by-aisle shopping. They were excited about which fruits we would get. They actually debated over which vegetables to buy -- and not with me (!) but between themselves. She wanted broccoli and he wanted cauliflower and yes, I know I am bragging here, but they agreed on their own to go ahead and get both. Amelia, the consummate doting big sister, took her brother to go load up on yogurt (yes, on their own) and then, when I realized I had forgotten hotdog buns back at Aisle 1, they went back to get them even managing to find the whole wheat variety as requested.

Unending pleas for candy and pre-pre-pubescent bitchiness simply did not exist on this trip, unlike so many earlier forays. By the end of it, all three of our carts were full and everyone – most especially Daddy, was happy.

That is not to say there have not been challenges. Or, that is to say, without the double negative, that there have been challenges. Take for instance the bombs that keep exploding in the kitchen-dining-living room. Gathering like a growing tide of debris that began on Monday with Noah’s birthday party even before Marley left and cresting over tonight with the carrot cake cupcakes that we made for Noah’s playgroup tomorrow, the downstairs is currently awash like a tsunami-strewn disaster area. I have tried to keep up, but I have, so far, failed.

Bombs and tidal waves. Like the sailboats and elephants of not so long ago, I appear to be mixing up my metaphors again.

The thing is this really is an adventure for me. For so many years, adventure meant trotting off to crazy places while Marley, more often than not, held down the fort and cleaned up the messes. What I'm learning... no, what I'm really just immensely appreciating right now is what a grand and wonderful adventure life is right here within the fort itself -- bombs, tidal waves and all.

Meanwhile, I am thankful that Marley gets a turn a bit of trotting. I am as vicariously nervous, excited and thrilled for, with and about her as I think is possible. Her adventure truly is my adventure.

There and Back Again -- Revisited

I remember the view clearly.

I was still getting used to the slight bounce in the drivers seat of the Heart of Gold as we made our way down the initial stretch of road that would be the very first of some 5000 miles before us. We were really only a few minutes out of our driveway and I couldn’t help but notice the first shards of corn plants cutting through the tilled earth, jutting out in a blur of perfect long rows like tiny green swords arrayed in endless formations across the vast Ohio farmlands as we rolled on by.

That image would be the first in a long list of pictures I wished I stopped to take and yet remain clearly in my mind’s eye just as if I were holding a 3 by 5 right now. Like the two horses standing opposite each other like some equine yin-yang symbol scratching each others’ backs with their snouts. Or the remains of an old filling station that we passed in Missouri, after missing an exit, the victim, I am sure, of being bypassed when the interstate arrived in the 50s, now almost completely reclaimed by nature’s arms. Or the soft look in the eyes of the young hitchhiker stepping into our mobile, rolling world on the very last leg of our journey home.

But it was the mental snapshot of those newborn blades of corn that has really stayed with me since we’ve been home. As we arrived back I was shocked by how much they had grown in the four weeks we had been away. Where they had been barely a thin inch or two when we left, now thick stalks rose above my head, already heavy with long silky-green ears. As the plants fill out, the corn crops transform wide-open fields into tall, thick forests that leave you feeling like you’re driving through tight corridors of green. Through the summer months and into fall, that image would come back to me again and again while driving errands or on my periodic runs along the rural roads branching out from our home.

It seems strange how long it takes before the harvest begins and how long it takes to finish. Only in the past week or so – six months since we began our trip -- have the last sections of field been plowed through by the combines, with the golden mounds of the farmers labor hauled off to silos in trains of tall, tractor-pulled wagons.

And so I guess it is no surprise that I find myself recalling once again those tiny green buds as Marlaina begins the first day of her trip back to Seattle, the final stage of her application process to Mars Hill Graduate School. There, and now back again. The kids and I dropped her off at the Columbus Airport this morning and I already miss her terribly.

Not a week has gone by since our return home where I have not thought about returning to this blog, continuing it perhaps or maybe – as some have encouraged – at least trying to “sum things up” somehow. “I know what your favorite part of this trip was,” I remember Marley telling me, with the certain smile only enjoyed by a good wife who knows her husband better than he knows himself. We had been trading favorite moments even before the trip was over, but she had me pegged. “Your favorite part has been writing the blog.” She meant it approvingly, understanding that it did not lessen any of the other aspects of our trip, but somehow brought it all together. And she was right.

And yet it has been hard for me to return to it. There was something about the simple purity of writing each day during our travels that made it easy. Meanwhile, so much craziness has ensued since we’ve been home. It has just seemed impossible.

Until tonight.

Perhaps because it only seems natural to write when we are apart. For so many years that was the only good thing that defined our many long absences. And in the final years, the words even became miraculous.

Or maybe, like the harvest, it’s just time.

Back Again

NEW KNOXVILLE, Ohio -- We are home.

And it is good, so very good.

The Last Leg

MERRILSVILLE, Illinois -- It was 408 miles to Chicago. We had a full tank of gas, half a pot of coffee, it was dark out and we were not wearing sunglasses.

Eight hours later we had cleared the Windy City and passed well into in Indiana before finally deciding to call it quits for the night at sometime around three o'clock in the morning. I am pretty sure we could have driven straight through to watch the sunrise over Ohio and be home shortly thereafter.

Wisdom, however, trumped all-night-driving valor and we decided to get a few hours sleep at the local Mejier's parking lot, which -- like Wal-mart -- is RVer friendly.

Probably all for the best as Chicago -- and the long road into town -- lived up to its name. The wind was probably the worst of the trip. At times we were getting smacked around so badly it felt like we were doing a hip-slapping tango with a drunken Sumo wrestler on roller skates.

And even in the wee hours of the morning, Chicago traffic made for a wild ride. The inner city Interstate connection to the highway that would lead us to into Indiana will perhaps win the award for "Most Harrowing" of this trip, although the judges are still consulting. The Heart of Gold was forced to navigate through the longest-yet-narrowest, single-lane, no-shoulder, concrete-barricade-encased, under-construction stretch of highway I have ever seen. The Heart of Gold is 95-inches wide. I'm pretty sure this "road" -- more aptly described, I think, as gauntlet -- was only 94-inches wide. It was that narrow.

At times there was razor-wire-topped fencing passing, I'm not making this up, within inches of my left ear. It felt like I was driving through the DMZ in Korea or the Green Zone in Baghdad.

Anyway, we made it through, got what can only be described as an extra mediocre night's, um mornings', sleep and now with freshly-bought provisions of Dunkin Donuts and coffee aboard, we are set to begin, this, the very last leg of journey home.

We might just be there by noon, if -- as Marley and the kids are reminding me for only the first time on this trip -- I can quit writing this blog and get going.

It will be good to be home again.

Capturing the Enormity

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota – It has been the perfect final harbor for our long journey, this stop here among our family in Minneapolis. It has been the ideal mix of sleeping in, quiet book reading on the couch, long talks, eating at fantastic restaurants, and playing with the kids and just watching the kids play together. All with the same sense of comfortableness and ease of self that only comes among family or the very best of friends – or most especially when it is both, as here.

Angie and Brett have taken a bold path, recently moving here from Texas where they have lived for most of their 15 years of marriage. Brett has been given an amazing job opportunity here, but as with any new job pursuit it has its share of uncertainty. I admire their dedication to keep their family first -- and together -- even amidst the angst of new pursuits in new places.

We have come to visit in the midst of their transition. While looking to buy a house they have rented a townhome for a few months. Despite its transitory nature, Angie has done a remarkable job of transforming brick and mortar into a real home, as well as a place of love and safety for her kids. Marley and I did the same thing when we moved to Ohio, renting a duplex during our few months of house hunting, but never achieved the level of settledness that Angie and Brett have found here in far less time.

Yesterday, we made our obligatory pilgrimage to the Mall of America. If you come to Minneapolis, you go to MOA. It’s like Cairo and the Pyramids or New York City and the Statue of Liberty or Munich and Oktoberfest, if you happen to be there, you know, in October, or, as the case may be, November, which inexplicably is when it happens that most of Oktoberfest occurs.

At any rate, I was prepared for a big mall, worthy of its name. I was not, however, prepared for what I have since learned is listed among the "1000 places everyone should go before their die." Simply put, the Mall of America is more than just a really, really big mall. In its center is an amusement park. I knew there would be rides, even a “roller coaster,” but this is a real amusement park. There are in fact two roller coasters, a log ride, a climbing wall, a three-story Ferris Wheel and slew of other gut-turning, head-spinning, scream-inducing thrill fests. All of this, mind you, is inside the mall.

Inside.

With air conditioning. That alone was worth the price of admission.

The mall itself is four stories up with all the usual assortment of stores, eateries and movieplexes, except there’s more than 500 of them. There’s also an aquarium, a police department – not just a little office, but a real PD – a post office, a wedding chapel, the coolest collection of Lego creations I have ever seen, a church, a university campus. I’m pretty sure there’s an airport in there somewhere, as well. To say that the Mall of America is big is like saying this roadtrip has been long – it doesn’t quite capture the enormity of it.

As impressive as it was and as much fun as the kids had the best part of our visit here has been in the simple moments – a quiet dinner with Brett and Angie Friday, sitting around the living room talking together late into the night yesterday, a late breakfast in PJs this morning even as I write this. All laced with the subtle, irreplaceable quality of time spent together, sharing hearts and stories and moments.

Indeed, I find it amazing that after having known Brett and Angie for 15 years now that there are basic stories that I have not heard yet – like how they met and feel in love while they were in college. I got to hear that story last night at dinner and was touched. Later as Brett and I drove in his car together, he shared more of how thankful he was the cookies that he and Angie had made that fateful day provided the perfect excuse to come get to know this beautiful girl who had caught his eye. I can tell he is still thankful.

We begin the last leg of our journey home this afternoon. Google Maps tells me we have 688 miles between this home and our own. “About 11 hours and 22 minutes,” it reads.

It seems such a drop in the bucket considering the time and distance we’ve traveled so far and yet I know the last few hours are always the longest. We’ll make whatever distance we can today and then finish this most excellent of roadtrips, we hope, by the end of the day Monday.

It will be good to be home. Indeed, like saying the Mall of American is big, saying that it will be good to be home doesn’t quite capture the enormity of it.

New RV?

Dear friend and fellow blog-traveler Diane R. was kind enough to forward these images along. I don't know if this RV has a heart of gold or not, but it certainly seems to be built out of gold. And I'm guessing it takes more than a few pounds of the stuff to buy it.

Taking donations now for next years' road trip....

July 4ths, Past and Present

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota -- I think this road trip must be wearing me out. After a noon arrival at Brett and Angie's full of fanfare -- with much waving, signs and I think there might even have been tickertape -- I promptly passed out on their couch in the middle of a conversation about something that I'm sure was very important, although I swear the only thing I remember is a vague sense of someone laughing at me just as I was drifting off.

I like to think this was a backhanded compliment, and I sincerely hope it was taken this way, that I would be comfortable enough among this family to become so quickly comatose, sprawled out before them, within minutes of our arrival.

They have a good and comfortable couch, excellent for passing out on. Which is good because apparently I slept for several hours, awaking only as everyone returned from a trip to a nearby playground.

Angie and Brett made us a wonderful dish of grilled chicken and shrimp fajitas that was eaten down to the very last crumb. From there it was over to some friends' house who had perhaps the best yard possible for watching Fourth of July fireworks. It was a great show with lots of ooohing and ahhhing, and not only because that's what you do, but because there were a lot skysparkles that none of us had ever seen before, including one that I'm pretty sure was a smiley face.

A year ago, I spent the 4th at the lake of my youth where I spent nearly all of my summers with my father. Spofford is a small lake that sits like a lower hinge between the New Hampshire and Vermont. Some of my fondest memories growing up revolve around Spofford.

When I was Amelia's age, it was the Nation's 200th Birthday and my father, his brother -- forever known to me as Uncle Ka-kas (don't ask) and I had just completed refinishing an old whaling longboat that we'd gotten out of an old woman's barn. Painting it in long stripes of red, white and blue had been my idea and it looked grand to my seven-year-old eyes. We put an old Johnson 30 horsepower engine on the back and Marc, my best of childhood friends, and I drove it proudly around the lake by ourselves in the Fourth of July regatta that year.

There were many uncertainties in my life as a child, but the Fourth of July at Spofford Lake was always something I could count on. Even now, so many years later, it feels strange to not be there.

But last year I was at Spofford, for the first time in a very long time.

I had been staying with Alice, my father's widow, for about a month and was preparing to leave. Before Pete's death, Alice and I had never really taken the time to get to know each other. We had, however, been fellow travelers in Pete's descent. I wish we had become friends sooner, because it would probably have been easier for both us and maybe even made a difference in Pete's situation.

But, as they say, better late than never. And in this case it that could never have been more true. Alice is a very special woman, who carried herself through the most difficult of times with a such a degree of quiet grace and dignity that even now is hard to imagine. I learned a lot of this, and so much more I didn't know, during my month with Alice last summer. Our days were filled with a lot of crying and laughter, often like a series of passing rainstorms, switching quickly back and forth between the two.

We did what people should do when they're mourning -- we ate a lot, we talked a lot, we cried a lot, we ate some more and we talked some more. While I lost a father, in the end, I gained a stepmother. And if there was any redemption in Peter's death, I cannot think of better.

I have struggled this past year with the horrible images of how Pete died. They have haunted me. Shortly before the 4th last year, I finally worked up the courage to go to the hotel where he killed himself. I felt compelled to speak to the person who had found him. I didn't know what to say, an apology seemed somehow inappropriate, but I wanted to recognize the terribleness of it. As it turned out, it was the same person who greeted me at the front desk as I walked in, part time hotel maid, part time receptionist. A shadow crossed her face, when I fumbled through my introduction. I could tell she was still very effected by it all. The trauma was still very real.

As she stood by saying very little, the manager told me of my fathers last few days of life. She said he had been so nice and friendly. How it was such a shock.

It. That unspeakable thing that he did, that for a few moments we talked around, but never actually about. I told the woman who had found him how sorry I was that she had to see such a terrible thing. She wiped away a tear, trying to maintain her composure. I felt awkward, unsure of myself, of what to say or do.

And then she looked me in the eyes, her own eyes still moist, and she thanked me. They will forever be among the kindest words I have ever heard.

As I drove the Heart of Gold to Minneapolis yesterday, thinking of July 4ths past and present, I was hit like a ton of bricks once again by what that woman must have seen when she opened the door. Tears rolled down my face as I imagined what Pete's final moments must have been like. How terribly alone he must have felt, how painfully hopeless he must have thought he was. As I drove and cried I found myself wishing that I could have been there. To tell him he was not alone, nor hopeless, but loved, so very loved.

And then I heard the words, "But, Jon, I was there." And then in my mind I saw it so very clearly. A man, like a light in the very heart of darkness, standing there in the room that night, crying, holding Pete as he died, praying "forgive him father, for he knows not what he does."

I'm not sure what to make of that and I feel awkward, the most awkward in this blog so far, in sharing it. But I will say this, it was remarkably comforting, like an undeserved gift. One of the things Aram told me that Sunday at Lookout Mountain is that God does not call us to shame. I believe that shame, like any pain, can be a good indication that something is wrong, but Aram is right -- God doesn't call us to shame, but only to love and to be loved.

I have a friend who is going through a particularly difficult time right now. The other day I read something in a book Marley and I have been reading throughout this trip by Dan Allender that immediately made me think of him.

“Hope compels us to live for the future by pouring ourselves out as offerings to God in our relationships with others. The primary way we give God glory is through loving others. Evil intends for us to succumb to betrayal by giving up on relationships; it intends for us to resign to powerlessness by giving up on the future. Once we lose faith and hope, then we are more susceptible to ambivalence and shame. But just as God restores faith and hope, he redeems shame and births love. He calls us to dance with unbridled passion.”

I sent him that passage the other night, the night before we drove here. I don't know if it has made any difference for him specifically, but they have resonated deeply with me. This trip has been that kind of passionate dance for me, of restored faith and hope, redeemed shame and remarkable, remarkable love.

Happy Birthday America

JACKSON, Minnesota -- After a long day of driving, we made it all the way through the Dakota badlands yesterday and into Minnesota. We began the morning just outside Mt. Rushmore National Memorial, hoping with an early start to see the four granite presidents.

We saw them. But only through the windows of the Heart of Gold. As we approached the park entrance, their faces looking down not so far in the distance, we were told that the parking lot was already full. While I would have loved to spend hours there, in the interest of getting to Minneapolis soon than later, our intent was to do little more than Chevy Chase and his family did at the edge of the Grand Canyon in Vacation. (If you've never seen the movie, it's worth it for that scene alone.) So, our enforced driveby got us on the road to Minneapolis a little earlier.

We left Scott and Deb's Monday morning. It was a great visit.

One thing I didn't mention was that in addition to everything else that was going on with their granddaughter, they also had Deb's parents visiting from their home in Oregon. They were wonderful people and even after so many years of marriage, still doting on each other, holding hands, taking care of each other, cracking jokes, clearly still very much in love. They are an inspiring vision of marriage in sunset as it should be.

On Sunday we all went to Church together and then were fortunate enough to be in town for the Great Montana BBQ Cook-off with "downtown" Absarokee blocked off so that dozens of the most skilled open-flame chefs in the area could show off their skills. My favorite, remarkably, was the Ahi, a yellow-fin tuna marinated and grilled to perfection. I raved so much, the cook -- a self-professed "good ole boy from Billings who just likes to cook" -- was kind enough to slip me his recipe stashed in his pick up truck around the corner.

Sunday afternoon, Scott saddled up one of the horses for the kids. Amelia rode -- really rode -- by herself for the first time and I took Noah for a few laps around the corral. Amelia was ecstatic. Noah was thrilled.

What most impressed me, though, was Scott's willingness, even eagerness, to do this for my kids. I think it is safe to say that by Sunday evening, after the emotional roller coaster of Abigail's emergency all week, staying up late talking with us, getting up before dawn to tend to the many chores of his ranch, preparing for and teaching Sunday School class, doing a therapy session after church, and then hours out in the hot Montana sun at the BBQ, only followed by more ranch chores through the afternoon, that he was flat out exhausted.

Plus, getting a horse ready for riding is no small task in and of itself, all the more involved with the "help" of a seven-year-old girl.

Scott must draw his strength from a very deep well because he seemed as patient and attentive and eager to teach my little girl the basics of horse care and riding than if had he been relaxing all day. Thanking him at one point, as he was saddling Texas, the horse we would be riding, he turned with an undeniable gleam in his eye, and said, "Oh, this is the fun part for me." I could tell he wasn't just being gracious, but that there was real joy in this for him.

But the thing is, I sensed that joy in everything he did, whether it was feeding his horses, sitting at his wife's feet for a momentary break while we all talked in the living room, preparing his lesson, loading a small forklift onto a trailer or talking to his daughter at the hospital, whatever he was doing throughout the day, there was an inner joy pervading it all. He was not just happy to be doing what he was doing at the moment, but there was that undeniable mixture of peace, gentleness, thankfulness and verve -- what I can only describe as joy.

The same could be said for Debbie, as well, who also wears a tireless, gentle, eternal smile on her face. We miss them both already. Indeed, even as we were just pulling out of their driveway Amelia asked, "can we come back here again?" And I don't think it was just because of the horses.

This morning we are bound for Minneapolis to spend a few days with Angie and Brett and their three kids, Justin and twins Grace and Garrett. Angie is Marley's cousin and life-long partner in crime. They are the ideal final stop for us on this long trip. They know us better than anyone and yet somehow still love us anyway.

Safe Harbor

ABSOROKEE, Montana -- We arrived at Scott and Debbie's home none the worse for wear. Just as Darrell said, the brakes returned to their previous RV-stopping vigor and we made it across the remaining mountain pass without barely a single white knuckle.

It is after even a few full days of travel since leaving Washington, very good to be here. Again, I find myself drifting back the boat metaphor -- this feels like a safe harbor.

Scott and Deb have built a home and a life in Montana that is very simply our kind of place and with our kind of purpose. Scott was first an armor and infantry officer in the Army and then chaplain and therapist. He retired from the Army a few years after we met him in Germany, but he has far from retreated from a full life of work and service and, in fact, now continues as part-time pastor at the local church and as full-time therapist, aside from the enormous workload of being a rancher with more than a dozen horses, several head of cattle and innumerable cats and dogs.

Although they've lived in their house for less than a year now, and indeed some details are still under construction, it already has a lived in quality and warmth that takes many people years, if ever, to achieve. Decades of practice moving at the beck and call of the Army no doubt has helped perfect their art of nesting, but there is unmistakable heart to their home and their life here now that resonates deeply, more permanently. Roots are digging in. This is a place to watch, love and nurture friends, family, grandkids and great-grandkids for years to come.

As it turns out that dream was, at least in part, in jeopardy through this past week. Abigail, their four-month old granddaughter, child of their daughter and son-in-law who live in an adjacent house, had become life-threateningly sick. They didn't know if it was cancer or some other unthinkable ailment, but something was undeniably wrong with Abigail's head. A worried trip to the local hospital led to a rushed visit to specialists in Billings which led to an even more frantic race to the children's hospital in Denver. Within hours, the child was undergoing brain surgery.

This was all going on as we were making our way from Washington to their home.

Amazingly, Scott and Deb decided not to tell us any of this until after we arrived. "We knew you wouldn't come if you knew this was going on, and we wanted you to come," Scott told us. Even as we were arriving they were just getting the good news. Abigail would be fine. The problem was not cancer nor any of the other nightmare scenarios. Instead, it was a birthmark of the rarest kinds, that grows on the inside of the skull instead of on the face. Untreated it would very quickly have killed her. Although there was some slight damage to the rear of her brain, the extent of which remains to be seen, all thing considered her prognosis couldn't be better.

It was a remarkable way to begin our visit, with the joy not only of reunion but with the kind of relief that can only be known by prayerful parents and grandparents on the far side of a life and death struggle.

I admire their strength and insistence on giving even amidst all their angst. We have been here only 24 hours, but already this place feels like home to me, their ease and hospitality is that generous.

Worst Kind of Tourists

(Apologies, again, for tardy posting. We have these past few days been off line, again. Here are a few days worth of musings.)

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyoming -- We're stuck. But hopefully not for long. It has been a full day of driving through Yellowstone and now, almost out, with one more high pass to clear, we find the brake pedal going, disturbingly, all the way to the floor. Even more worrisome is the part where it doesn't do anything to actually stop the vehicle.

This started to happen, fortunately, just after we had come down from a steep mountain pass and not during.

But, like I said, hopefully this won't be a problem for very long. Even more so, we hope, it won't come back when we're driving along that aforementioned steep mountain pass still needed to be crossed.

I have spoken to two mechanics and have been given assurances. The first, a local mechanic, although on the other side of the twice-now-aforementioned pass, who apparently deals with this kind of thing a lot, told me that in all likelihood the break fluid had vaporized, which sounds bad, but he assured me, is not too big a deal. The trick he said, is to just let everything cool off for about an hour or so and and everything should be back to normal. I do not know this mechanic, however, and am only able to trust him so far with the lives of my wife and kids. I could live without me, but I could definitely not live without them.

So, I needed further assurances. Fortunately, Darrell, my aforementioned friend of a previous post who also happens to be a world-class mechanic who I do trust with the lives of my wife and kids, after a bit of testing and guided probing of the Heart of Gold, verified completely what I had been told.

So, we're waiting for things to cool off.

In the meantime I can tell you that Yellowstone is a complete dump. Trees and dirt and rocks everywhere, water spraying uncontrolled all over the place, animals getting in the way of me getting through the park. Plus these pesky mountains. Not only that, but I got yelled at. By the park ornithologist, or at least that's who he said he was, although in my opinion ornithologists aren't really to be trusted. Especially the ones who yell at me.

As it turns out I deserved it, though. In my defense, the 13-year-old girl who worked at the check-in at the campground we stayed at last night told me that you couldn't stop and park in front of the bald eagle's nest, which was high up in a tree not long after you got into the park, BUT you could park down the road a bit and walk over to it.

This is exactly what I did. It was early morning and we were among the first people into the park, the kids were just waking up, and it seemed a reasonable enough thing to do. I hiked up a bit, not all the way to it, but close enough to watch the mother eagle standing proudly in her nest looking things over in that way that eagles do from high atop trees. I took it all in, snapped a few pictures, and turned around to make my way back to the HOG.

That's right about the time when the ornithologist drove by and started yelling at me. Apparently, it was people like me that caused "the eagles to fail." I'm pretty sure those were the words he used, which I remember thinking was ironic because I had just read the day before that the bald eagles had just been taken off the endangered species list. I didn't say that of course, just continued to apologize profusely while he yelled at me some more and told me how I could be taken before the Yellowstone judge, be fined a lot of money and that there were millions of people who came through this park every year and I, surely, must be one of the very worst, etc, etc. I agreed and, for some reason, began hearing verses of Alice's Restaurant floating through my head, specifically the part about the police taking a bunch of "8x10 color glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining how it was to be used as evidence against me." I didn't mention that either. I just kept apologizing and promising that I didn't know and that I would definitely never, ever do it again.

But that's not what I came here to tell you about.

I have felt like the worst kind of tourist here. And not for the reason I just mentioned. At least not mostly. Yellowstone National Park truly is, aside from being a dump, a national treasure. The outdoors have always been a place of worship for me, a place where I find it so much easier to connect with God, so I was not kidding when I described it earlier, even more seeing it, as a national cathedral.

In short, it is a place I could imagine spending a lot of time in. To try and drive through in a day has been like walking around Disney World, but not going on any of the rides -- it looks nice and all, but you're missing so much of the joy, so much of the point. And then, on one of the few moments I step toward a ride, Donald Duck yells at me and, of all things, tell me to get back in my car.

Yellowstone, clearly, is a place that you could spend days, weeks, even months and still not take it all in. This is the kind of place where I could really go camping. Just so we're clear, RVing is not camping. Yeah, they go park in places called campgrounds, it's still not camping. Anytime you literally bring the kitchen sink, it's not camping. Not my kind of camping, at any rate.

To me, camping is stuffing enough food and water for a few days to a few weeks into an unbearably heavy backpack and stumbling around the woods and mountains as far away from other people as possible and pitching tents and freezing in sleeping bags and lighting fires and smelling of smoke and getting dirty and eating meals that tastes all the more exquisite for having been carried around so and looking up at impossibly bright stars and saying things like "it just doesn't get any better than this." That's real camping. Not pressing a button and turning the couching into a bed and turning on the furnace when it gets a bit cold. But I digress.

Yellowstone is place where I could do some real camping. But alas, we have only enough time for the windshield tour.

We did, however, pay our obligatory respects to Old Faithful. Unexpectedly, it was every bit as awesome as our imaginations made it out to me. Right on cue, it burst forth, sending spray and steam high into the morning sky. Even Amelia, who has been hard to impress on this trip, gasped with delight. Noah was absolutely dumbfounded and after its several-minute-long eruption, asked innocently, "can we do that again?!"

My favorite moment, however, came from hearing the stories of others. Heading back to the RV, I spotted a pair cleaning the logcabin-style bathrooms near the entrance to Old Faithful's stage.

While Marley and the kids went to fix some breakfast, I cut a beeline for them. Bathroom cleaners have the best stories. Turns out John and Verna were husband and wife, both forest service employees, with as they admitted freely "the best jobs in the world." Both retirement age, they had been working in Yellowstone for 10 years. John estimated he'd seen Old Faithful do her thing no fewer than 3,500 times over those years.

"I always stop whatever I'm doing and watch. It's impossible for me not to," he said. Surprisingly, it's not so impossible for many of those 3 million visitors they see come through the park every year.

"A lot of people," said Verna, "see it go up and then run back to the parking lot and leave. You'd think after traveling this far they'd wait a few minutes and see the whole thing." As park custodians they see the very worst in the tourists, having to follow behind them to pick up their messes. "I still can't believe people would litter in place like this, but they do" said Verna shaking her head sadly, holding up the full bag of trash she'd already collected this morning as if to prove she wasn't making it up.

One of my favorite questions to ask people is "what's the craziest thing you've ever seen?" John and Verna both had some pretty funny stories, some of the most ridiculous involving people running out to Old Faithful to try and look down into the hole from which she erupts.

Invariably those people "get an all expense paid trip in the back of a squad car to go see the judge and get slapped with a $1000 fine," said John.

"Yeah," I said, sheepishly, "I've heard about that judge."

While our visit has been all too brief, Yellowstone has revealed many of her jewels to us. Whole herds of buffalo, lone riverside bison, distant bear, boiling mud, wandering deer and moose, amazing vistas, unforgettable terrain.

And brakes that, hopefully, now have fully healed.

And an eagle that I can only hope was not nearly as scarred by my proximity as I was by the ragings of an irate, if perfectly justified, ornithologist.